The Livermore Valley wine country’s booming tourism and event industry soon will have another entry.

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors has unanimously approved a new 15,000-square-foot event center at Garre Winery on Tesla Road. The new center will feature a banquet room, barrel room and a wine bar. It will replace the 6,000-square-foot tent the winery currently uses.

“We’re looking for these kinds of projects,” Scott Haggerty, the board president, said at Tuesday’s meeting, “projects that enhance the viticulture aspects of the area.”

Event centers have become big business in the Livermore Valley. Nearly half of the valley’s 38 wineries have space for special events, ranging in size from 150 guests at the BoaVentura to 500 for an outdoor wedding at Wente Vineyards.

Haggerty said he especially likes the fact the center would replace the large tent the winery uses for events. The board recently has dealt with other applications from those wanting to build large event tents in the Livermore Valley, and Haggerty suggested that the board likely will look at an ordinance in the near future to better regulate what can go up in the valley.

Just last month, the board unanimously denied an application for an event tent that Steve Powell, owner of Tesla Vintners, wanted to build at his winery. Neighbors voiced concerns about noise and traffic it would generate, and there were questions about whether the tent fits in with the county’s South Livermore Valley Area Plan.

Some neighbors also stated similar concerns over the Garre center, saying the project did not adhere to local ordinances and was contributing to the build-out of the South Livermore Valley. Chris Bazar, Alameda County’s planning director, said the Garre project was dissimilar to the other projects because it would be a permanent structure that would serve viticulture and winery-related uses.

Haggerty stressed that the board is not against event centers in the valley.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said there was nothing wrong with the officials expressing “private political views via private text messages.” Strzok, in particular, “did not say anything about Donald Trump that the majority of Americans weren’t also thinking at the same time,” he said.

By William Booth | Washington Post LONDON – At $1 billion it is the most expensive embassy ever constructed. But its designers say the new American chancery on the Thames River marks a paradigm shift in design: the U.S. Embassy here will exude openness, while hiding all the clever ways it defends itself from attack. After decades of building American...

State regulators are due to consider a plan to replace power from the Metcalf Energy Center in south San Jose with alternative electricity sources, including battery storage. If implemented, the plan could boost PG&E customers’ utility bills.